While the US Government is negotiating about raising the
debt ceiling, U.S. consumer have amassed a total of over $17 trillion in private debts. The level of the latter is historically high too.
The good thing about the private debts is that most Americans currently have no problem servicing their debt on time. More importantly, delinquency ratios are near record lows.
The faster-than-usual increase in consumer debt over the past three years was mainly driven by a record volume of mortgage originations, as many households took advantage of historically low rates to refinance their mortgage and even take out some cash in the process.